Wednesday, May 20, 2009

And now for a discussion of weighty matters. With the Henderson’s June 20th wedding just a mere month away, Rickey has much on his mind at the moment. With each passing day, the monumental day grows larger on the horizon. Exciting and wonderful things such as buying a house and starting a family together await Rickey and Ms. Henderson, but today we must discuss an even bigger and more pressing issue: Rickey’s wedding band.

Now, Rickey isn’t one to wear a lot of jewelry, but when it comes to purchasing a symbol of his love and devotion for the most important person in his life, you damn well better believe he’s going to splurge on a little bling. After all, Ms. Henderson got to rock the ice for over a year, and we feel that it’s Rickey’s turn now.

For months, online wedding band vendors have dogged Rickey with offers of free tungsten carbide rings in exchange for advertising space here on Riding With Rickey. This never ceases to amuse Rickey because four of our readers are already married and our other seven single readers seem to be perfectly content staying in on a Friday night and masturbating angrily to reruns of the Bob Newhart Show. Also, tungsten carbide is about as valuable as Carlos Beltran’s mole excretions. So needless to say, Rickey turned down the offer.

And so Rickey headed to his trusty Libyan jeweler to shop for a wedding band and/or some plutonium. Quickly realizing that gold is a fairly boring metal and adamantium wedding bands don’t exist and even if they did, they’d probably be ridiculously pricey, Rickey finally settled upon a platinum ring. Nothing too gaudy, just a plain classic band. Behold, the precious:Note the heavenly ethereal glow basking the ring. That, friends, is no accident. Yes, we know, Rickey has weird looking hands. If we sold advertising space here at RwR we could probably have afforded to hire a professional hand model, but we didn’t so deal with it.

Rickey’s had the ring for a few weeks now, and he’s been extremely curious what it feels like to wear it for a day. You know, a sort of test run. Ms. Henderson has flatly ordered him not to put it on until the wedding, but then again, she also told Rickey not to watch “Angels & Demons” without her and look how well that turned out. No, Rickey had to know what it felt like to wear the ring for a day. Rickey is a curious cat, you see. And so, in the name of bold experimentation, Rickey carefully slipped the ring on. Below follows a running diary of the events that followed.

7:05AM: Nothing happened. Rickey didn’t turn invisible, Nazgul didn’t shriek in the distance, and there was a notable lack of hobbit-related shenanigans in the Henderson abode. For a moment, the room did seem to turn a sepia hue, but upon close analysis, this turned out to be the morning light. Well this was a whole shitload of money well spent.

8:34AM: Here’s a fun fact about platinum—it’s ridiculously heavy. So heavy that while walking, you need to adjust your posture to compensate for it or your left hand will drop to the ground and you’ll be stuck walking in circles around it.

11:15AM: Rickey leaves the apartment and hops in the car, ever mindful to steer carefully, lest his leaden left hand cause the vehicle to swerve off the road.

11:30AM: Rickey lends assistance to a deep sea underwater mining facility. Shortly thereafter, a series of calamities occur and the facility is quickly flooded with water. Rickey is able to avoid being trapped in a chamber flooding with water by jamming his hand in front of a closing door—the ring on his hand being the only thing preventing the door from slamming shut and trapping him. Rickey bravely escapes his watery confines.

[editor’s note: our bad, none of this actually happened. While driving, Rickey often likes to daydream that he is the lead character in major summer blockbuster movies -- in this case, Ed Harris in “The Abyss” -- this probably goes a long way to explain why Rickey failed his first two road tests]

12:09PM: Huzzah, the investment pays off! Somebody notices the damn thing! While on the supermarket checkout line, a fellow next to Rickey comments on the ring and says “aren’t you a little young to be married?” Rickey takes this in stride and calmly informs the gentleman that back on the compound where Rickey grew up, it’s not unusual for juveniles as young as seven to marry their special betrothed. The dude takes a step back.

3:34:PM: Rickey arrives home, deems the ring test run successful and attempts to remove the ring.

3:35PM: Uh, it’s not coming off.

3:36PM: Fuck.

4:15PM: How the hell is it that after 4.6 billion years of evolution, people like Rickey are afflicted with joints that are larger than the rest of their fingers? Damn you Charles Darwin, and your little pet beagle too.

4:20: Darkness closes in.

4:30PM: After little Vaseline and a whole lotta twisting, the ring finally comes off. Whew. Rickey won’t be trying that again anytime soon.

17 comments:

Smitty's advice: wear it out one evening to a bar. The number of women willing to flirt with you and ply you with drinks actually increases for a PERIOD OF TIME.

This is due to a phenomenon we like to call Antidesperate Syndrome.

In my extensive research on the subject, I noticed that many hook-up-able women were turned-off by the "nice guy" and wanted someone who basically ignored them. It gives them something to pursue. Put on a wedding ring, and you are now fair game. You see, you are not there to hook up. You could care less how many single women are in that bar. And because of that, they will flock to you.

Beware, though. After several years of marital bliss, the wedding ring begins to have the opposite effect, just about the time when you begin to wonder if you still "got it."

Wedding rings are heavy -- with responsibility, commitment and the inevitable guilt, but man, you should seriously consider getting those girly arms to the gym if you're having trouble lifting one.

Here's some advice worth its weight in platinum, you should spend your last free days trying to figure out what common household substance will make your ring finger break out in a rash so you can leave that bling at home in a drawer where it belongs.

Congrats to Rickey. I don't know how you other guys can be unhappy when marriage is so great - I don't have to do anything around the house anymore. I just make a list, nag a little until my voice gets hoarse, and the jobs get done.

For future reference, liquid soap works much better than the vaseline for easing a tight ring over the knuckle. And you will need this info when you want to do something with tools and dirty greasy things so the ring isn't scratched.

A Brief Rickey Primer

Rickey is taking a timeout from touring the globe to perform his creation, "The Interpretive Dance of the Electrons," in order to devote his time to the discussion of more essential matters. These topics include (but are not limited to) meerkats, W2 forms, the joy of model railroading, all things Jack Bauer related, thrilling new developments in the world of soybeans, and the 2008 Mets pitching rotation. Assuming you’re not intimidated by the intellectual firepower of these diverse and stimulating issues, we invite you to read on.